Scheduling Tasks with Cron in Node.js

Cron in Node.js

Schedule recurring tasks in your Node.js applications.

node-cron

Simple and popular cron library.

npm install node-cron

import cron from 'node-cron';
// Run every minute
cron.schedule('    ', () => {
  console.log('Running every minute');
});

// Run every day at midnight
cron.schedule('0 0   ', () => {
  console.log('Running daily cleanup');
});
// With timezone
cron.schedule('0 9   ', () => {
  console.log('9 AM in New York');
}, {
  timezone: 'America/New_York'
});

// Validate expression
const isValid = cron.validate('    '); // true

cron-parser

Parse and iterate cron expressions.

npm install cron-parser

import parser from 'cron-parser';
// Parse expression
const interval = parser.parseExpression('/5    ');

// Get next occurrences
console.log(interval.next().toString());
console.log(interval.next().toString());
// With options
const interval2 = parser.parseExpression('0 9   ', {
  currentDate: new Date(),
  tz: 'America/New_York'
});

Bull (Redis-based)

For distributed job queues.

import Queue from 'bull';
const myQueue = new Queue('tasks', { redis: { port: 6379 } });
// Add repeating job
await myQueue.add(
  { task: 'cleanup' },
  { repeat: { cron: '0 0   *' } }
);
// Process jobs
myQueue.process(async (job) => {
  console.log('Processing:', job.data);
});